


Perfect Sleep

by helsinkibaby



Category: CSI
Genre: Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-03-16
Updated: 2003-03-16
Packaged: 2017-10-18 18:04:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,907
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/191692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/helsinkibaby/pseuds/helsinkibaby
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You never know what you need until you find it</p>
            </blockquote>





	Perfect Sleep

There's an old saying that my mother used to have, something about even a broken clock being right twice a day. It used to befuddle me to no end as a child, until I figured out just what it meant, and it's a lesson that I've tried not to forget.

That even though something looks broken, looks wrong, it still manages to work just fine in its own way.

Some might say that that's my life.

A scientist, an entomologist, one of only literally a handful of people in the country who is an expert in my field. I worked long hours to get to where I am today, never letting anything come between me and my work; not anything and not anyone. A workaholic and proud of it, I didn't see anything wrong with my life; after all, it was the life I chose. Nor was it as if work was all that I had; I had friends, though not many close ones, I dated, but only occasionally.

I thought that I was happy.

I thought I had everything I needed.

Most of the time I was, and I did.

Even a broken clock is right twice a day.

Some might say that that's her life too.

It was something that I recognised in her instantly, even as a college student at one of my seminars, the only person there who listened intently, who contributed anything of note to the discussion. Certainly the only one who could ask a vaguely intelligent question. She talked to me afterwards, we went for coffee and talked, which turned into dinner, a long dinner at that. We traded email addresses, we could correspond on a fairly infrequent basis, more often than not whenever one of us had an interesting case that we wanted the other's opinion on.

That was all it was, ever. Student/mentor, friends, just friends. That was all we were. Sure, we clicked right off the bat, sure we could talk about anything, in a strange form of verbal shorthand that left others scratching their heads, but we were just friends. She was someone I could talk to, someone I trusted.

That's why I asked her to come to Vegas.

I knew that no-one in my unit could investigate Warrick objectively, any more than anyone on day shift could. There was no way I was letting Ecklie within an ass's roar of the case for instance, knowing that he'd try to make things look worse than they were.

Not her. She'd never do something like that.

It didn't take long for the word about her to spread around the lab. She could be abrasive, cold occasionally. Headstrong, dedicated to her work. A workaholic, found around the lab at all hours of the day and night.

Those things sounded familiar, though I couldn't think why. Then I realised.

They said the same things about me.

I didn't think anything of that either; after all, I knew that we were an awful lot alike, it's why we hit it off so well in the first place.

That was all there was to it, despite the talk, despite the rumours.

But even a broken clock is right twice a day.

I guess that applies to paranoid schizophrenics as well. They may look and act as though they're making no sense, but if you listen, if you read between the lines, sometimes, even if you don't, they have an insight that cuts through all the lies.

"You can pick through a million lives and not have one of your own."

Standing on a Vegas sidewalk, that's what Cassie James told me. And it came to me that she was right. That's what my life was, going through the detritus of the lives of other people, piecing the puzzles back together. My life was my work, my work my life. There was nothing beyond that. Which had never bothered me before, but I knew that my hearing was worsening, was afraid that I could lose my job.

And if I didn't have my job, what did I have?

In my mind's eyes, I could see Catherine standing in front of me, eyes blazing as she railed at me about imprisoning myself in my hermetically sealed condo, asking me what personal stuff was in my life. I could see Nick and Warrick and Greg, going on with their lives, talking about what they did when they got outside of work. Could see the friendships, the camaraderie there.

Couldn't shake the sense that I was on the outside looking in.

Then I realised something else too. That while, if I were to lose my job, I wouldn't know who I was, or what to do with myself, the person that I'd miss most was her.

Somewhere in the two years that we'd been working together, she'd worked her way into my life to such a point that I couldn't imagine her not being there. That's why I'd sent her that plant when she'd turned in her leave of absence request form, my simple way of asking her to stay, of telling her how much she meant to me, without actually saying the words, or knowing that I even wanted to. It was an impulse thing, and I wondered if I'd done the right thing the second that I hung up the phone. But the next time I saw her, her eyes lit up and there was a small smile on her face, and while she never said anything about it to me, not then, I knew that she was happy.

That I'd made her happy.

I was surprised at how happy that made me.

Catherine had asked me if I was in denial. I dismissed it as the vodka talking, dismissing another of my mother's favoured sayings; "In vino veritas."

It had happened without me noticing, the needing her, the wanting her.

"Cite your source."

An aeroplane bathroom stall, evidence of the Mile High Club, my surprise at discovering that she was a member. The sheepish smile on her face, her dancing eyes, her absolute refusal to let me get away with not citing my source, her ability to take it on the chin when I turned the tables on her.

Had I ever bantered with any other CSI like that?

"You wanna sleep with me?"

Pain, hurt, more than I'd ever seen in her eyes before. All the more surprising because this was her that I was looking at, talking to; a woman who never let her personal life get involved with her work, any more than I do.

A woman who, despite her pain and hurt, came to me in the middle of the night with blankets and warm drinks and kept me company as we watched a pig decompose. A woman who smiled at me after I lectured her about Sung Tzu and the first witness to a crime, a woman who knew the story as well as I did.

"Chalk. From plaster."

I was been so angry, so frustrated over the case, and I sounded off to her, something I rarely do with anyone. Only later did I realise that, and I told myself that it had happened because I was so angry, that it could have been anyone standing there and I would have done the same thing. I'd almost believed it, but it was been hard when all I could remember of the moment was the look in her eyes, the feel of her hand on my cheek, soft and warm, lingering longer than it had any right to. There had been something in the air, something that shouldn't have been there, but it was there, and I didn't know how to deal with it.

So I didn't.

Classic denial Catherine would call it; she'd be right too.

Denial lead to withdrawal from her, which resulted in her being pissed off enough to file for a leave of absence.

Which lead to me sending her the plant.

Which was the turning point in our relationship

"Since when have you cared about beauty?"

"Since I met you."

"You sure know how to light up a room."

"I've got a gal named Sara and she would love that scarf."

Not that things were easy for us, the broken clock analogy rearing its ugly head again. There were so many reasons why we shouldn't work as a couple. The fact that I'm bad with people, the fact that she's bad with people, that we've both been burned in the past. There's an age difference, we work together, I'm her boss. She deserves more than I can give her, someone who's healthy and whole and not losing his hearing. She deserves the world, and I could never give her that.

Those were my thoughts, and I meant every single one of them.

Ignoring the two important truths, the times when the broken clock that looked so wrong was in fact so right.

She gets me, understands me on every level imaginable.

And I need her.

That's the other thing that Cassie James said to me that day.

"You never know what you need until you find it. And the next thing I find it might be the thing that changes everything."

I never knew what was missing in my life, indeed, that anything was, until I found her.

And she changed everything for me.

So simple, and yet so complicated.

"What will you do when you find it?" I asked Cassie as she moved away from me, her reply floating back to me.

"Sleep…the most perfect sleep."

When we had Cassie in the interrogation room, Brass told me that she was a needle freak, that she didn't know what she was talking about. I told him that she did, and about the case, I was right. But she was wiser than that was Cassie, and that would take longer for me to figure out, and I don't think I did until this very moment.

I stiffen as she turns, one slender arm reaching out across the bed, face frowning even in sleep as she encounters an empty space where I should be. A shaft of sunlight coming through a crack in the curtains lands squarely on her hand, catching the two rings and creating a gold and diamond sparkle. Something old and something new, one which belonged to my mother, one bought only last month from a jeweller downtown and put on her hand yesterday. Its twin feels strange on my hand, but a good strange, the right kind of strange, and I smile easily at her, even as her eyes open and she frowns at me.

"I thought I was supposed to be the insomniac," she grumbles, turning onto her side and pulling the covers closer around her, a move which upsets me somewhat, as I was rather enjoying the view.

"I'm a scientist," I tell her with a shrug. "I observe."

Her eyes are closed, but an amused smile lights up her face. "You're on your honeymoon," she points out. "Take some time out…come back to bed."

She doesn't have to ask me twice, and insomniac or not, she's asleep by the time I'm beside her, my arms around her, my body pressed against hers. And I smile, tightening my grip on her, pressing a kiss to the top of her head, joining her in a perfect sleep.


End file.
